Stay Classy, Guys

[elfs]

Shortly after John McCain "joked" that it was a good thing our number one export to Iran was cigarettes because "That's a good way of killing them," George W. Bush, boarding his plane upon leaving the G8 Summit: "Goodbye, from the world's greatest polluter." That's a nice final kick to the world's groin.

John McCain's chief economic advisor, Phil Gramm, on the economy: "We have become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, compalining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."

The remarks are so bad, McCain's campaign manager had to say "Gramm's comments are not representative of John McCain's views." Brad Delong notes:

Republicans had ideological majorities in Congress from 1981 through 2006 (at least). Republicans held the presidency for all except the eight Clinton years. The policies proposed by the executive, enacted by the legislature, and implemented by the courts over the past generation are Republican policies.

And, to Phil Gramm, these policies must have worked. Hence the cognitiv dissonance created by the fact that people appear to be dissatisfied--and the "nation of whiners" quote: it's an attempt to make sense of the fact that the policies must have worked and the fact that the policies do not seem to be popular.

I would go further and say that they have worked: the Phil Gramm's of the world are not hurting. It's the rest of us who are whining. Gramm yearns for the days before unions and labor laws. We poor schlubs who've actually lost buying power in the past eight years should still be grateful we get to bask in the intellectual brilliance of men like Phil Gramm.

Of course, we all know McCain's economic plan


Is McCain really that bad? Yes, he really is: He has neither the intellectual acumen nor the personal intergrity to be president.

Comments

[tagryn]

"Ideological majority." That's a nice phrase, but meaningless. History shows Democrats controlled the House from 1955-1995 and the Senate from '87-'95 and '01-'03. If DeLong wants to classify Tim O'Neill, Dick Gephardt, and George Mitchell as Republicans, he can, but he's gone off into definitional swampland at that point.

The real news from the G8 article is China and India refusing to sign on to any global warming compromise without drastic cuts by the G8 nations. Without those two on board, an emissions reduction agreement would be pretty much meaningless. Actually, I can't blame them: why should they sacrifice their economies on the altar of global warming if other nations aren't willing to ruin theirs as well?

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

Add a little more backstabbing, and we've become the Centauri Republic.

Ah, I see

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

You say the Republican Party's former "ideological majority" in Congress makes it to blame for our current economic woes.

But you also said recently that the Clinton administration deserves all the credit for paying down the debt in the 1990s.

Come on, you aren't really this duplicitous. Why do you let politics make you say stupid things? What's wrong with just openly admitting that the two parties have roughly equally harmful positions (and voting records) on most practical matters, and that the fields of politics and economics are way too complicated to reduce to this kind of "us vs. them" reasoning?

. png

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Okay, first and foremost, having Democrats control one arm of Congress while the Republicans control the other is meaningless as far as "who controls Congress", since obviously neither party does. Same for the other way around.

Secondly, Elf, you should actually take a look at the charts and claims you post before you post them, rather than always trusting that your source doesn't have their own agenda. I actually sat down and created a chart of when each party control the Executive branch, the House, and the Senate, and frankly from 68 to 08 didn't really find a pattern that matched a rise in the overall debt. In fact, the one time that the debt dipped over a several year period was during the Clinton years, when the Republicans controlled both House and Senate. Yet, when the Dems controlled both House and Senate, it varied whether there was a rise in debt or the debt remained steady (there has only been one time when the Republicans have controlled Congress since 68, so can't have a comparison).

Better, take a look at this: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/pdf/hist.pdf

Straight from the White House; go down to Table 1.1 and review the surplus/deficit during the years since 1789. I haven't made a comparison of party control before 1968, but you'll notice that the big deficits were really around wars...until the early 70's. The last surplus year we had before Clinton was in 69. Before 68, you will find a variety of years of surplus offset by years of deficit, most of which were associated with a war (or the Great Depression, for example).

This, I believe, is about us, as a nation, deciding to become addicted to credit and borrowing, not which party is fiscally responsible. Clinton simply decided that he wasn't going to do that, and was able to achieve the aim of cutting back from 98 to 01 by convincing the Congress to work with him.